An open-source, low-level emulator based on the FreeDO source code.

Monthly Archives: April 2012

4DO 1.2.0.3 Released!

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Some good updates! Primarily bug fixes, but also a new UI feature!

Improvements:

  1. Auto-crop feature added. Tired of your 3DO games adding a black border around your game? Enable auto-crop in the display menu to allow 4DO to automatically detect and remove these borders! More details below
  2. Sewer Shark and Night Trap were experiencing a startup issue in 1.2.0.2. this is now fixed.
  3. Slam ‘n Jam 95 was crashing after the Samurai Shodown improvements in 1.2.0.2. This is now fixed.
  4. 4DO now detects additional types of input devices. For example, a PS3 controller set up through MotionJoy now works as intended!
  5. More French translation improvements from Benjamin Siskoo
  6. More Chinese translation improvements from money

Auto-Cropping Disabled

Auto-Cropping Enabled

Behavioral and technical details of the autocrop feature are:

  • Cropping will perform at most 25% on each side.
  • The amount of cropping performed on each side is determined independently
  • If the user has specified to preserve aspect ratio, crops may result in an aspect ratio different than native. This is automatically expanded to the available area. Thus, games that attempt to simulate widescreen can actually be played in the intended widescreen format. An example of this is apparent in the screenshots of Wing Commander III above.
  • Auto-cropping will only increase the amount of screen cropping if the available cropping detected remains constant for 1 second.
  • Cropping detects black and near black colors; colors within about 6% of black are also considered black.
  • If the crop for any side is detected to have been too much for any side, it is immediately expanded appropriately; thus, non-black pixels are always made visible.

I first saw the need for this feature when I played through Lucienne’s Quest. I’ve come to find that several games I’ve played benefit from removing this border: Wing Commander III, Daedalus Encounter, Alone in the Dark 1 & 2, AD&D Slayer, and pretty much any FMV game!

If you want to try 4DO 1.2.0.3, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

4DO 1.2.0.2 Released!

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A few elusive core bugs fixed!

Improvements:

  1. Daedalus Encounter freeze fix updated. Viktor did a lot of debugging, and eventually found and fixed a difficult core emulation bug that was causing the Scene 5 freeze! This also uncovered a fix to an issue in Pebble Beach Golf Links.
  2. Samurai Shodown graphical issues fixed. Samurai Shodown was previously riddled with odd graphical issues, but no more! The characters render correctly, and the backgrounds are no longer black.

Both of these involve changes that are not specific to the games they were targeting. So, other games might be affected, but I haven’t spotted any differences in the handful of games I tried.

If you want to try 4DO 1.2.0.2 beta, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

4DO 1.2.0.1 Released!

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Japanese game players rejoice!

Improvements:

  1. Bios 2 Support Added. Viktor determined how to added support for the second bios slot, used in Japanese hardware for the Kanji font. This should enable support for several Japanese games that require it (one example being Blue Forest Monogatari). Awesome!
  2. Daedalus Encounter timing fix added. This should alleviate many of the freezes encountered.
  3. Screenshot Feature added. Press F3 to take screenshots to a “Screenshots” subfolder.
  4. Russian translation fixes and improvements from both Viktor and Sedabi.

If you want to try 4DO 1.2.0.1 beta, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

4DO Leaves the Beta Stage

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Across the goal line

4DO is no longer titled as “beta”. The emulation is in a good state, and the primary features of the emulator have been stable for quite a while.

It’s been a overall a quick revival since the release of the FreeDO source code, and 4DO now provides 3DO fans with a clean, functional emulator.

4DO was able to inherit many great features from FreeDO: high-definition rendering, clock speed adjustments, and the impressive emulation accuracy! The FreeDO user interface was not open-sourced, but the resulting rewrite for 4DO was an overall benefit. The development of 4DO has introduced several unique features as well:

  • Intuitive controller setup, native joystick support, and support for up to 6 players
  • Game identification system
  • Easy-to-use quick save/load system
  • Game compatibility fixes (mainly through the efforts of Viktor!)
  • Support for 6 languages

An Abbreviated 4DO History

It’s probably not commonly known that 4DO was first started about 4 and a half years ago in 2007. I had been eager to see an open-source 3DO emulator and was disappointed that there was still none available. The aim of the project was still the same as it is today: to provide a full-featured, open-source emulator for 3DO.

At the time I was attempting a high-level emulation (HLE) approach. Progress was reasonable, and I managed to get the CPU emulation concrete enough to run many of the non-Opera binary files like the mildly famous sonic example (the screenshots of this are still available on the sourceforce site, for any emulation historians interested). However, the HLE approach was proving to be too laborious without additional help. After staring at disassembly for countless hours, I cancelled the attempt in early 2010.

Note: For those interested, the Russian “Phoenix” project is also attempting HLE emulation and results so far are impressive! I believe it is in closed beta, and be aware that there are fake versions of this emulator out in the wild.

Later the same year (November 2010), FreeDO released the code to its core emulation as open source! I found out about this in July of 2011, started rebuilding the user interface, and restarted 4DO with the FreeDO core. At this time, 4DO became a low-level emulator like its ancestor. Since then 4DO has crept along introducing features up to the ones you see today!

Elsewhere in the world, and also sometime after the FreeDO source code was released, Viktor created 3DOPlay with similar hopes of improving 3DO emulation. We discovered each others’ projects about a month ago. Since then, Viktor has been contributing help, and his efforts have been improving game compatibility significantly!

The Future of 4DO

I do not have particularly strong opinions of the features or changes that should be introduced into 4DO. There are a few things I would like to see added: light gun or mouse support, screenshot support, and save slot visualizations (like in NESticle).

With 4DO released, I personally am going to cut back on my involvement, and I have no expectation for how long. I am very happy to have helped the 3DO emulation and I feel that 4DO has accomplished its primary objective of providing a full-featured open-source emulator. I don’t intend to halt 4DO development; I’m still available for bug fixes to any major issues, and I intend to continue to perform any releases. I am hoping Viktor is available to continue help as well. I’ll likely be playing 3DO games too, so I can continue to add features when the desire hits me.

I would like to reiterate that anybody interested in contributing code changes to 4DO is welcome to do so! If you message me in the forums, I will be happy to help you get started.

If you aren’t interested in helping out as a developer, there’s always value in contributing updates to the Compatibility List.

Thank You For Your Help!

3DO emulation would be in poor shape today if it weren’t for the feedback and interest from the sparse, world-wide community of 3DO fans. I’d like to thank everyone who helped identify problems, iron out issues, or just drop by for moral support!

I’d like to also thank the following contributors:

  • BryWI : for feedback, community support, and lots of testing!
  • Enio Marconcini : for Portuguese translations
  • Benjamin Siskoo : for French translations
  • “money” : for Chinese translations
  • Antonio “Bloodbat” Ramirez : for Spanish translations
  • Sedabi : for Russian translation improvements

Long live 3DO!

4DO 1.2.0.0 Released!

7 Comments

There are no functional changes in 1.2.0.0.

I made some updates to the publishing tools in the 4DO repository, this includes a fix in which the SlimDX.dll file was in the “Tools” directory in the zip file (this was seen in the original 1.1.6.5 zip file uploaded, but was later fixed).

If you try out the installer and find issues, please leave a comment!

If you want to try 4DO 1.2.0.0 beta, head to to the download page:
4DO Downloads

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